About

“A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know.” —Judge Murray Gurfein, Pentagon Papers case, June 17, 1971

Our Mission

Freedom of the Press Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to helping support and defend public-interest journalism focused on exposing mismanagement, corruption, and law-breaking in government. We work to preserve and strengthen the rights guaranteed to the press under the First Amendment through crowdfunding, digital security and internet advocacy.

Freedom of the Press Foundation is built on the recognition that this kind of transparency journalism — from publishing the Pentagon Papers and exposing Watergate, to uncovering the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program and CIA secret prisons — doesn’t just happen. It requires dogged work by journalists, and often, the courage of whistleblowers and others who work to ensure that the public actually learns what it has a right to know.

Press Freedom Advocacy for the 21st Century

As technology continues to change journalism, it also challenges the rights of journalists around the world. Freedom of the Press Foundation is committed to advocating for the rights of all journalists in the digital world—whether it's in the public sphere, the courtroom, and wherever necessary.

Government secrecy runs rampant, whistleblowers are stifled, and journalists are increasingly under threat. We call all governments to account for trampling on the rights of journalists and whistleblowers of all stripes, and using the Freedom of Information Act, digital security technology, and advocacy for an adversarial press, we strive to make government as open and transparent as possible.

Crowd-Funding

In a changing economic and technological age, media organizations are often susceptible to corporate or government pressure. This can lead to watered-down or compromised coverage, or worse: censorship.

Increasingly, non-profit media and transparency organizations are emerging as a critical component of the journalism landscape. Leveraging the power of the Internet, these organizations are helping to reinvent and reimagine independent watchdog reporting.

Right now, too many of those organizations are struggling for funding, relying on a few large foundations or competing for donors. Our goal is to broaden the financial base of these types of institutions—both start-ups and established non-profit organizations — by crowd-sourcing funding and making it easy for people to support the best journalism from an array of organizations all in one place.

Digital Security For Journalists

Protecting the communications between journalists and sources is one of the most important press freedom issues of the 21st Century. A record number of whistleblowers have recently been prosecuted in large part because the government thinks it can obtain the email and phone call records of any interaction, without ever attempting to force journalists to testify against their sources in court.

To that end, Freedom of the Press Foundation supports a variety of encryption tools for journalists that aim at protecting these digital communications. We also train journalists and news organizations in how to use these tools, so they can keep their sources—and themselves—safer.

We also develop and maintain the SecureDrop project, an open-source whistleblower submission system that has been installed by over twenty major news organizations worldwide. We provide assistance with installation and training for journalists. Go here to find out more.